Breaking Free by Karen Erickson

TITLE: Breaking Free
AUTHOR: Karen Erickson
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill Press (Amber Heat)
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 11k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.00

With a new membership to the sex club, the Kama Sutra Club, Mallory wants a night of anonymous passion. The manager Blake spots Mallory and decides to make her dreams come true, including her desire to have a threesome for the first time in her life. The night of passion that ensues is more than Mallory ever dreamed…

As I was reading, I had every intention of focusing my review on this story about how short stories shouldn’t be afraid of being erotica if they can’t work a romance angle. I got to the final chapter in it, however, and was completely thrown aback by the gotcha ending the author tacked on. Seriously. So now I’m going to complain about gotchas.

Gotcha endings are great when they work. When is that? When the reader can go back into the text and see all the signs that the author planted along the way to point at the gotcha. Then, a reader gets that feeling of, "Oh, I should have seen that coming." Surprise is a very good thing. If there aren’t any signs, however, a reader is left with a whole feeling of “what the hell is going on here?”. Like Bobby dreaming away an entire season of Dallas. It’s lazy, and it’s annoying, and I don’t know about other readers, but it turns me off a writer faster than almost anything else. Because I feel cheated.

Why does it feel like I was cheated? Because there are internal monologues for both hero and heroine before the last chapter that contradict the end. Or at the very least, feel like they contradict. Maybe if the story had stuck with a single POV, I could have bought into the gotcha. But it didn’t, and I didn’t, and honestly, I doubt I’d trust this author again to buy another of her stories. It’s a shame because if it had stayed simple as a piece of erotica, I would have liked it a lot better. But the entire feeling of, “Oh, I need an HEA! Quick! I better tack one on!”, leaves me cold.

Readability	8/10 – Easy prose that maintains a nice balance of eroticism
Hero	5/10 – When the focus is on the smut, there leaves little room for characterization.
Heroine	4/10 – I know even less about her than I do the hero. At least, until it’s too late.
Entertainment value	2/10 – I wasn’t minding this too much as an erotic story – not a romance – until the gotcha ending pissed me off.
World building	4/10 – This is about the smut. Who has time to create a real world here?
TOTAL:	23/50

Night Wolf by Karen Erickson

TITLE: Night Wolf
AUTHOR: Karen Erickson
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill Press (Amber Heat)
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 12k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $4.00

Romance novelist Amanda has been widowed for two years, retreating to a quiet country life for peace and privacy. Hearing howling at night has her writing a werewolf hero for the first time in her career, but when a naked man shows up on her porch, injured with nowhere to go, she takes him in to help him anyway, unaware that he’s a werewolf. The attraction between them is instantaneous, but with a rogue pack determined to kill Dane, indulging in it might be dangerous.

I’ve been reading a lot of short stories lately because of the busy time of year it is. Some of them have been not so good, while others are passable. Some of them read so fast, I wonder where the time has gone. This story was one of those.

The story itself is far from original. Romance novelist heroine? I’ve read three of those just in the past month. An alpha werewolf who’s found his mate? I’m not even touching that one. Yet, I was able to look past those devices in this story. The author’s prose is simple and sound, making it easier to lose time when she very effectively builds on her two characters’ UST. This isn’t a story where they fall into bed together in the first 1k. The author actually takes a little time within the story’s short construct to build the attraction between Amanda and Dane, enough so that I was able to enjoy it. Quite a bit, actually. Dane is very, very alpha, and the brief descriptions of Amanda’s reactions to him hooked me into wanting him, too.

One thing I’m not sure I understand is why authors feel the need to do HEAs on short stories. Frankly, I’d be happy with a happily for now if it meant the plot and emotional development wasn’t rushed. This need for an HEA ends up hurting more of these short stories than it helps, mainly because I’m usually left disbelieving that such a thing could actually happen in such a short time period, especially when the characters are meeting for the first time in the space of the story. If one or the both of them know the other before the story starts, that’s easier to believe and buy into. But for this reader, love might happen at first sight, but a lifetime together takes more than one night of amazing sex to succeed.

Still, this story works better than some others of its length, because the author commits to building the tension – very effectively – before allowing her characters to hop into bed together. It goes a little downhill from there, but thankfully, there isn’t much more after that. For a nibble, this was worth it.

Readability	8/10 – Simple and easy, I read this in one sitting.
Hero	6/10 – I think the jump from shifters to humans as partners was too swift to be believable, but a nice alpha hero all the same
Heroine	6/10 – Nothing too objectionable, but nothing all that memorable, either
Entertainment value	7/10 – The UST in this made it worth it for me.
World building	6/10 – I wanted to know more about the pack stuff, but for its brevity, it mostly worked.
TOTAL:	33/50